99 points

which quotation from "the tell-tale heart" by edgar allan poe brings out the theme of time?

1. and this i did for seven long nights—every night just at midnight.

2. i made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

3. all in vain; because death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim.

4. it is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.

5. and it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel – although he neither saw nor heard – to feel the presence of my head within the room.

The correct answer is 1. And this I did for seven long nights—every night just at midnight.  

The quotation where you can see the theme of time in Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart' is definitely the first one. As you can see, in that line, the narrator is stressing the importance of time when it came to his decision to kill the old man. He would enter the old man's room at night, every night just at midnight, over the course of seven nights, in order to try and kill him.

The other options do not even mention the topic of time - apart from option 4, but it is not as elaborated upon as in sentence 1.

the anwser is went creeping down the river again, across the wide lonely marshes to the sea.

i longed to go with them out into the world to seek my fortune in foreign lands—africa, india, china and peru!

and, dreaming of the lands i had never seen, i'd sit on there, watching till they were out of sight.

it is the background information on the characters and setting explained at the beginning of the story. the exposition will often have information about events that happened before the story began. the exposition is often the very first part of the plot.